Learning to Design Mesh Clothes
Off Topic
Learning how to make mesh clothing is certainly an interesting journey. I've dabbled in it a bit, just as far enough so that now I know what I don't know. I'll get the conversation started and perhaps others with more experience will join in.
First check out Maeve Balfour's reply in Basics for Mesh clothing creation :
A quick question which I feel is vital to ask first off: Have you worked with / created mesh before?
The reason I ask is that if you are totally new to mesh creation, you really MUST learn the overall workflow involved with mesh creation in general before you even consider creating mesh clothing. You would be doing yourself a huge disservice if you don't, and setting yourself up for a world of frustration.
Mesh is a BIG topic. I'm definitely NOT saying this to scare you off at all - it's just important to make that clear from the outset. Mesh creation is something that requires certain skillsets before contemplating advanced things like mesh clothing for SL avatars. If you don't learn the basics beforehand, you will just be banging your head against a brick wall.
However - once you learn the essential workflows of mesh creation, it WILL open up vast opportunities for creativity ... not only for SL, but for many, many other areas. The general mesh skills you will learn are universal across the field of 3D, so it will open up wide avenues to explore in the long term. Definitely worth persevering with the initial learning curve.
Blender is definitely a good program to start out with . There are many forum regulars here who use it, so any SL related Blender questions posted here will be quickly answered. Also, there is a vast number of Blender tutorials out there covering pretty much any topic possible - it's just a matter of finding them. Plus Blender will pretty much do anything you need in regards to creating mesh for SL. (I must point out that personally, I am NOT a Blender user as of yet (although I plan on converting to it in the near future, having reached the practical limits of my current modeling program)).
Off the top of my head, a couple of good beginner Blender tutorial sites you could begin with are: The Gryllus Blender Course and Canned Mushrooms . There are plenty of clothing tutorials out there as well, which other forum regulars here can point you towards - although as I said, you need to know the mesh essential basics before attempting advanced projects like that.
A general list of the workflow steps you will need to learn to be proficient in mesh creation:
1: Creating mesh shapes - Working with primitives, polygons, vertices etc to create your shapes.
2: UV-mapping your meshes - Creating maps so that your 3D shapes can accept 2D images for texturing.
3: Material mapping - Defining separate areas on your mesh (similar concept to how faces on a standard SL prim work).
4: Rigging (for clothing) - Defining a "skeleton" for your mesh, so that it can attach to the SL avatar.
Please, don't let yourself be put off or daunted by this - it's NOT as scary as it looks. But it IS critical to learn these basic skillsets. The learning curve can be steep at first, but it is definitely worth sticking with it and coming to grips with everything - the creative potential that will be unlocked is vast once you do so.
And by all means, ask any questions you need to here on the forums. There are plenty of regulars here who are happy to offer advice.
